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Bela Lugosi and White Zombie

I got a video on internet with a shortcut from White Zombie (1932), from Victor Halperin, with Bela Lugo, John Harron, Madge Bellamy, etc etc.



Great! All Lugo films I've seen untill now are very good to me! But I read in many places that Lugo didn't not became a star as he really deserved. Going a little more deep in it, I discovered that Béla Ferenc Dezso Blaskó, or Bela Lugo, was hungarian and started on stages. The most curious thing: when he went to USA he didn't knew to talk english! He memorize the text hearing the words and then repeating it... ck huh? Another curious point: he played Dracula on stages only because the producers can't spend money with famous actors! Lucky guy! So, he became the best Dracula ever played on stages. And why? Because his hungarian foreign accent! But, just so with all great work he did, he wasn't taken to play Dracula on the theaters. The character were played by our sweet Lon Chaney, that come to die a few years later, giving the chance to Lugo be the first clasc horror movie with audio, Drácula (1931), from Todd Browning.

The strange point: the hungarian accent that make Lugo famous as Dracula were his ruin too... He just can't talk without the accent, and were aprioned always like a gypsy or noble foreign... Sad but true...

After this he was discovered by Ed Wood, and then he became the great star we know today, with good films as Glenn or Glenda and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Ok, this everybody knows... What make me sad is the fact that after years, Lugo became the leading actor of Ed Wood and nothing more works for him. He was the first celebrity to be a hooked in morphin, what caused his death in 1956... A sad end to a great artist...

I lovethe way Lugo played Dracula. I did not know

how he really got started in the movies or how he died

untill I read your post. I like to thank you

for the info.

he was not the first star to bee hooked on morphine however he was the first star to publicly announce he went to rehab to break his morphine addiction.

his best ed wood movie was bride of the monster

he turned down the role of frankensteins monster and karloff got it however after watching lugo play the monster in one of the sequels all i can say is thank god he turned it down originally

as far as dracula goes the spanish veron of the original was a superior movie to the english one.

i love lugo's movies dont get me wrong but if i have to pick one dracula nobody compares to christopher lee

I know what you're saying. I just bought the Dracula DVD with Christopher Lee. I couldn't see the entire film yet, but untill the point I saw, he's really a great actor. Lugo was more serious, a kind of robot Dracula, while Lee entered the character and developed better the Dracula style. Are differents ways to play Dracula, but surely two great movies.

In the documentary THE HAUNTED WORLD OF EDWARD D. WOOD JR. Bela Lugo Jr. said that Ed Wood just used his father. I like Ed Wood movies to but it was too bad to hear Lugo Jr. say that.

Henry

after watching multiple interviews with many of ed woods usual gang of misfits all i can say is bela's son is full of crap about that